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Customers of Herbmedic, which trades under the name Herbs and Acupuncture, on Queensway in Stevenage have been left counting the cost after shelling out hundreds of pounds for treatment they never received.

The company, which has practices across the country, is now in the hands of receivers, Macintyre Hudson.

Sandra Emery, of The Paddocks in Stevenage, paid £350 for 10 treatment sessions, but only received one before the practice closed.

She said: “A standard course of treatment is 10 sessions, so most customers will have bought this package.

Claudia Gois, of Walden End in Stevenage, paid £240 for 12 treatment sessions but only received four before the practice closed.

She said: “I went there on Friday and it was closed. There was no warning or anything.

“I got in touch with head office and they said it’s very unlikely I will get money back.

This is entirely consistent with my own experience. I went into one of their shops and asked about a cure for diabetes (hoping the be able to refer them to Trading Standards, but the young lady behind the counter had such a poor grasp of English that her reply was incomprehensible. She just kept trying to push me into having a consultation with “the doctor” who appeared to speak no English at all. I left.

The chequered history of Herbmedic

The company that his just gone into administration is Herbmedic Centre Ltd. It has been in existence for only two years. Its predecessor, known simply as Herbmedic, was dissolved on 13 March 2007, Companies House said

Given this history of companies that dissolve every couple of years and then mysteriously reincarnate with a slightly different name, one wonders if this really is the end of herbmedic, or it is just a device for shedding bad debts. Is this just another “pre-pack administration“?

Almost all of the reviews fail to come up with any positive evidence that acupuncture works well enough to be clinically useful. Only two come close, and they are the two singled out as “editor’s picks”. Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising given that the editor is Dr Mike Cummings.

Again and again, the results are inconclusive: #8 is pretty typical

Acupuncture for tension-type headache: a meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials.

This meta-analysis suggests that acupuncture compared with sham for tension-type headache has limited efficacy for the reduction of headache frequency. There exists a lack of standardization of acupuncture point selection and treatment course among randomized, controlled trials. More research is needed to investigate the treatment of specific tension-type headache subtypes.

Vast effort and a lot of money is being put into trials, yet there are very few (if any) positive results. Very often there are no results at whatsoever. All we hear, again and again, is “more research is needed”.

At some point someone will have to decide it is all a charade and start to spend time and money on investigating things that are more promising.

Follow-up

A correspondent checked with Companies House to discover more about two of the directors of Herbmedic, Mr. Li Mao and Mr Xiao Xuan Chen. They have a chequered history indeed. [download the complete list]

Mr. Li Mao is, or has been, on the board of 31 different companies. Of these 6 are active, 5 are in administration, 14 were dissolved, 4 were liquidated and 2 are active with proposal to strike off. Not only is Her Medic centre Ltd in administration, but so is Dr China (UK) Ltd, and Great Chinese Herbal Medicine Ltd

7 Responses to Chinese medicine chain, Herbmedic, is insolvent

Re Herbmedic/Herbs and Acupuncture : The receivers Macintyre Hudson are a reputable firm of accountants.
In all likelihood, Sandra Emery and Claudia Gois will be classed as unsecured creditors and as such come fairly low on the priority list of people to be paid. Their best bet is to register their claim with Macintyre Hudson in the hope of getting some money.
To me, their seems little sense in funding further research into acupuncture. The only advantage, to acupuncturists, of doing so is to postpone the day of reckoning. Obviously this allows them to bring in some money in the meantime.

It could well be that the massive expansion in Chinese Herbalists on the High Street is coming to a rather abrupt end. I have noticed recently that a few Dr& Herbs appear to have cease trading. Does anyone know aboum them too?

1. The business model for this type of shop involves cheap premises (always very small), cheap staff (can’t speak English etc.) and cheap medicines (Chinese herbs in bulk cost bugger all; acupuncture costs nothing). As such, it’s a licence to print money and that’s probably the only interest the proprietors have in it.

2. However market economics is wonderful, and of course lots of people have jumped on the bandwagon. As a result, they get less customers, drop their prices, and make less profit.

3. In a recession, people don’t spend money on things that don’t work. So it’s not surprising that these guys are up against the wall.

But I don’t think they will go away. They’re just feeling the squeeze.